Does Magnus have a girlfriend?

It could work either way, of course. If the perception of safety is higher with gun control, then it's an argument for gun control instead.

Well, I was proposing a different argument. When you pick a position, you are not committed to some particular argument. And if we want to know a position is bad, then we have to have a response to all plausible arguments, not just the most common one. I think that's an error a lot of people make. There is often a typical argument made for a position, which makes people think, that's the only argument they need to respond to. But that's not how it works. If a position is correct by virtue of an argument that no one proposes, it's still correct.

"That is the fear. Something in our subconscious knows, "Holy crap!!! Officials with guns are just going to shoot/carpet bomb and not even look to see if we are there.""

People come up with all sorts of arbitrary reasons to fear. There are people who see on the news a shooting that occurred in a store and then they say, "I'm afraid to go to stores now." But what they really witnessed was something very unlikely, but even unlikely things might happen somewhere in a large country. The point is, just because there is a news report of something doesn't mean it's likely to happen to you next.

As far as talking about whether an amendment is relevant or not, it's reasonable, but then you wonder what amendment couldn't you make this argument for. You could always argue "well we made that amendment a long time ago, but we don't like it anymore." They might not use those words, they might say it's "not relevant," but that might just be a better sounding way of saying they disagree with it. But if people can just change things on a whim because they disagree with them that'll really mess with stability. Maybe we'll start to say, hey, freedom of speech is cool and all, but control is even more fun these days, so let's get rid of it because it's old.

I'm not trying to troll you or anything at all. I see what you're saying about the second amendment. But I just wonder how you can keep that logic, without making the state of amendments up to the whims of the government, which kind of defeats their purpose. Then corrupt officials can just do whatever they want.

But ok, it's not clear what counts as violating the 2nd amendment. So you're not saying we should say, screw the amendment, you're saying, what it means to have a right to own a gun is not what gun advocates necessarily think it is. Which is fair -- we do have rights, and freedoms, but we also have responsibilities.

Is your point that limiting gun ownership doesn't conflict with the right to bear arms or something like that?

OK, the discussion of guns has moved this into politics - locking.

David, moderator